Oh, look at the sun, I must say to myself
over and over, so that I might look at the sun.
-Battery Park in Winter | Chase Berggrun

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words--

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.
-Alberto Ríos | A House Called Tomorrow

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh | Sometimes

I think of viewing my Grandma Rosie
recomposed in her casket, maybe
like a painted cicada husk
left here, in this world, while the flying and chittering
lifted to another--which the rabbi promised happened
for a fact, and while I think a fact takes more
than merely petrifying faith, I do admit
that there are mysteries whizzing throughout an oxygen
  molecule

-Albert Goldbarth | The Title for a Collection of Poems Appears Out of Nowhere

I have wanted all the world, its beauties
and its injuries; some days,
I think that is punishment enough.

Often, I received more than I’d asked,

which is how this works—you fish in open water
ready to be wounded on what you reel in.

-Dear Life | Maya C. Popa

We are exceedingly comfortable
with posturing and self-defense
that masquerade as apology.
But what’s needed in this moment
is unmixed confession
of our nation’s sin,
deep and indefensible.

-Nikki Grimes | You Still Dream

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

Czeslaw Milosz | A Song on the End of the World

Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. 

-​Ada Limón | A New National Anthem

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.
-​You are Tired (I Think) | e. e. cummings

to this republic, for however long we stand,
I’ll watch with you the rain’s arrival in our yard.
We’ll lift our faces, together, toward the glistening.
-Pledge | Jehanne Dubrow

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

The Rider | Naomi Shihab Nye

My children are so young
when I turn off the radio as the news turns

to counting the dead or naming the act,
they aren’t even suspicious. My children

are so young they cannot imagine a world
like the one they live in. Their God is still

a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly
of actions. And I think they think I work

for that God. And I know they will someday soon
see everything and they will know about

everything and they will no longer take
never mind for an answer. 

-Will You? | Carrie Fountain

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry--

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music--
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft--

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset--

I cannot walk through all realms--
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark--

What shall I do with all this heartache?

-​Speaking Tree - Joy Harjo

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you

What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

-When Giving Is All We Have | Alberto Ríos

What if I throw the white light of Alma around anyone who might need protection from the reckless speed of driving or the reckless swerve & skid of the world? & the psychic opened his hands & shrugged up his shoulders. So despite your doubt or mine as to why I’d gone there, to a psychic, in—I kid you not—a town of psychics—in the first place, right now, as you read this, let me throw the white light of Alma around you & everyone you pass close to today, beloved or stranger, the grocer, the bus driver, the boy on his longboard, the lady you stand silent beside in the elevator, & also I am throwing it around anyone they care about anywhere in the spin of the world, because, we can agree that these days, everywhere, particular caution is in order &, even if unverifiable, the light of my dear sister Alma, couldn’t hurt.

-​The Psychic | Victoria Redell

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me.

-Instructions on Not Giving Up | Ada Limón

I work around (and live around) a lot of sustainability-minded folks. I use beeswax wrap and avoid using disposable plastic and cleaning papers as much as possible. Conserving resources isn't as much a conversation or to-do list as it is the way we live.

Plastic and paper and compost are all very tangible, measurable items. Energy, emotional resilience, and time are less tangible, less measurable, and less objective, but all of those are important resources, too. In small businesses, the idea of the hustle is pervasive and can easily become dangerous. We powerload our client list, seeing gaps where we can fit one more client in to make expenses for the month, or planning clients several months in advance in hopes of avoiding a dry spell. It can be very, very difficult to rest when the only one responsible for your success or failure is yourself.

​When it seemed like everybody I knew was doing decade retrospectives for the new year, I was scowling and feeling resistant to doing that much reflection. I always chafe a bit at the resolution thing; expecting to change ourselves all at once is, after all, a lot to ask of a single midnight, and frankly I reserve the right to change my goals whenever I darn well please, thank you very much. 

Instead, what I'm doing is choosing words to focus on each month and doing a little bit of framing those words in the context of work. January was boundaries, and part of the boundary I set was refusing to make the new year a big ol' Thing, so the series is starting now with February's word: Respect.

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

-who are you,little i | e. e. cummings

It’s still out there,
and it’s tucked in this keyboard too,
now we are an organ, now we are an oboe,
now we are young or ancient,
now we are smelling wallpaper in the house
our grandfather sold with every cabinet,
table and doily included,
but we are still adrift, floating,
thrum-full of longing layers of sound.

-​Song Book | Naomi Shihab Nye

My friend Bethany is a naturalist, environmental educator, and generally lovely person who recently shared this little seed of a thought:

"I'm trying to think of my to do list like a garden instead of a fight: something I tend, something that needs care, where some things are okay getting less attention for a while, some just need a little attention each week, and sometimes something just absolutely needs all the care I can give before letting me be more hands-off again. The image is helping me be affectionate towards all these tasks."

Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance

-Ada Limón | A New National Anthem

Sometimes I still see her
My mother, the dreamer
She'd say, "Nothing's impossible, child"

A dream needs believing
To taste like the real thing
Like some stranger you recognize

So pure, so electric
So sure, so connected
To those little believers inside
May we all be so lucky

-Soft Place to Land | Sara Bareilles

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear

​-Blessing the Boats | Lucille Clifton